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Why Am I So Sentimental?

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Twoapenny:
If it's any consolation, Sunblue, I have found in the past that sometimes when something is particularly tough it is because I am getting ready to let go of it.  So it might be that next Christmas you'll have shifted a bit and a year's worth of healing will have taken place and it won't be quite so painful.  It is very hard when you have people that could love you (in a normal, healthy way) and they don't.  Maybe your brother's way of coping with his own family issues is to put a mental block on the whole family and only focus on the ones he choose rather than the one he was born into?  Might be his way of dealing with the feelings that come up, it's very complicated and I do think these difficult families create all sorts of different problems in people.

I know what you mean about volunteering and giving to charity not being the same for you as having family around but equally what you are doing for other people by doing that might literally mean the difference between them spending the day feeling happy and spending the day wishing they were dead.  It's such an emotive time of year and I think a lot of people feel any kind of loss in their lives much more acutely.  For people who don't have family (for whatever reason) or who are homeless/skint/ill etc having someone else do something kind for them means such a lot, even when it's not a face to face exchange of any kind and is done via another organisation.  They do a hamper scheme in our area for elderly people who are on their own; people do up little boxes of food and small presents and the recipients often write letters of thanks which are published in the local paper afterwards.  So many of them say they don't have family and getting a present from somebody makes them feel so special.  So you're doing amazing things for other people by volunteering at that time of year and giving them what you aren't getting for yourself which I think makes it even more amazing :)

JustKathy:
Hi Sun,

I related to many of the things you said, and while I don’t have the answers, I can tell you a bit about my FOO. It sounds like we have a similar family dynamic, so maybe you can find some connection?

I was the target child, and have always been sentimental and hyper-sensitive. I don’t know why. I cry over everything. A happy movie that’s emotional will make me bawl like a baby. I have very few of my childhood possessions, as NM disposed of them all, but the few items I do have, I cling to. Small gifts from my grandmother are my greatest treasures. Even though I am now estranged from my co-Father, who hurt me badly, I still have ticket stubs to concerts he took me to as a child, and am sentimental over those few happy moments where I thought, even for an hour, that he loved me. NM and co-father caused irreparable psychological damage, yet I am still sentimental over the handful of happy moments that I DID have. My entire life, people have told me to stop being so sensitive. It’s not something I can turn off.

My sister, like yours, is a mini-me of my N-mother who catered to her every whim until the day she died. After N-mother passed, my sister became even more cold and heartless. She is an ice queen, filled with nothing but anger. Loves no one but herself.

My brother was the golden child. He too has become very cold and detached, but it wasn’t always that way. When he was a child, he was pushed to be the overachiever that NM demanded him to be. He was forced into competition ice skating, becoming a child actor, even forced to convert to Judaism because NM said “Jews control the industry.” He was painfully shy, had no friends, and was the most sensitive kid on earth. This lasted until his late 20s, when he married an N, just like his mother. After that, he became cold and cynical. Just like your own brother, he claims to have forgotten the life he had before marrying his N-wife. He started treating me badly, and we finally ceased contact.

I also wonder how we could have grown up in the same household and ended up so differently. I will say this. Even though I am the most emotionally damaged of the three, I am by far the best person, and I think you are too. What may seem like a character flaw is perhaps something we should be proud of. We are sentimental because we are compassionate people who have love in our hearts. We are the ones who should be angry, but it didn’t turn out that way. Why we didn’t, is anyone’s guess.

sunblue:
Thanks TwoPenny and JustKathy!  It is so nice that someone else understands.

Two:

I think you are right in that perhaps this is about me going through the last vestiges of hope for a family that I'll never have.  Of course, as the holiday is getting in full swing, we're all bombarded by all these messages of families, relationships, the importance of "spending time together as a family", etc.  It's hard to avoid them.  What's worse is when technically you have a family....but in reality you really don't because of the N members or the ramifications from them.  As for volunteering, I know that it's a good thing to help others during their time of need....and I do that especially during the holidays.  The hamper charity you mentioned sounds like such a nice idea!

JustKathy:

Much of what you described in your family resonates with me.  In my case, the golden child is my older N sister who is very coldhearted and who is my mom's mini-mi.  My mom spends her real holiday with her (every holiday, every vacation, nearly every weekend, every evening on the phone for an hour or so) and she just deigns to give my brother and I one night a year on Christmas Eve.  As for my brother, he hurts the most...because I know he is capable of more as I see it in his relationships with others.  Perhaps you are right.  He tends to be a monochromatic thinker (everything is black and white) and perhaps he just threw me out with the bath water when he decided to go "low contact" with my parents.  Perhaps it is his way of coping with the N family.  At any rate, the result is it is a total loss for me, regardless of the reasons. 

I'm so sorry to hear of the way in which your N mom has hurt you.  But I don't think there's anything with being sentimental and keeping around sentimental items.  Ultimately you are right in that those of us who have hearts and compassion and the capacity for sentimentality are better off....we just weren't lucky enough to have family we could give it to.  For me, I think part of my focus on sentimentality and nostalgia now is trying to revisit a time when things were a bit simpler and more hopeful.  That time is gone now.  It's also difficult for me to see others in my family create new memories and not have any sentimentality for anything to do with our FOO....especially when I see them doing it with others in their life.  But, alas, there is nothing I can do to control or change that.  I have to somehow learn to let all of this go and accept that I will never have.

Thanks again to you both for responding.  Please know that as Thanksgiving approaches next week, I am dearly grateful for you and others on this board who have been so kind to me.  I hope that you both can have a pleasant holiday devoid of any N drama. :)

Thanks again.  Sunblue.

sKePTiKal:
I'm just going to drop this here and you all do what you want with it.

Love and simple human kindness is a very real "thing" in this life. It's an energy that's tangible, like when the barometer drops right before a big storm rolls in... only it's the bestest energy out there. Like the wind, or the feeling of sunlight on your winter-deprived skin.

And it's MEANT to be experienced and felt and shared way more than it is these days.

Those of us who have lived our lives longing for this; observing it from afar and hoping there's some crumbs dropped our way have a deficit of it that we typically forget doesn't just get received from a source outside of us. We receive it ourselves when we give it away to others - even complete strangers.

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